


Everything Dark and Unseen

by enjambament



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Arranged Marriage, Bonding, Inspired by Eros and Psyche (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), M/M, Memory Alteration, Non-Linear Narrative, Other, Pre-Canon, Shapeshifting, Time is not a line, slight AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-06
Updated: 2019-08-06
Packaged: 2020-08-10 03:55:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20128939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enjambament/pseuds/enjambament
Summary: A retelling of the Eros and Psyche myth featuring Aziraphale and Crowley.Aziraphale is sent to Hell, half hostage and half marriage prospect in an effort to broker a ceasefire between Heaven and Hell before the beginning of time. This is a story about banned books, the mystery of trust and wanting what's already yours because it's not yours enough.





	Everything Dark and Unseen

**Author's Note:**

> This is a very slight AU - imagine the events of this world happening in the very next universe over to the one of the tv show, which is also next door to the book universe. 
> 
> Time is not exactly linear in this story.
> 
> If you're interested, this is my imagined casting for the two non-canonical angels: [Hesediel](https://www.interviewmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/img-aiden-gillen_163452848903-750x1000.jpg) and [Jophiel](https://media.allure.com/photos/5c86d85d9eb7f52ca09c7cd4/3:4/w_2123,h_2831,c_limit/0419-allure-covershoot-gemma-chan-hillier-bartley-top.png).
> 
> EDIT: Yes, I did just change the title - LEAVE ME ALONE TO MY DRAMATICS.

HELL  
(before the Beginning)

The hall he entered was pitch black and cool. It was, in all honesty, quite a relief after all the stinking, fumbling bodies Aziraphale had been pushed up against on the journey Down. The whole experience had been very much like taking the one hundred and ninety-three stairs in Covent Garden tube station at rush hour would be in the very far distant future, except that it was worse in every way and unfortunately existed already. 

“Uh... helloo?” he called. His voice echoed back at him, unexpectedly hollow. As a rule, there was very little echoing in Heaven. Booming, reverberating etc. were all the special devices of Metatron, and therefore not available to the everyday Principality. Generally, one’s voice in Heaven came out sounding like one was in a very warm, small closet or possibly a professional sound recording booth. A shiver went down Aziraphale’s back and his wings drew up, fluffing out. “Anybody home?”

There was no response. Aziraphale had one terrible moment, in the blackness and the silence, to wonder what would be worse - being trapped in hell for eternity at the whims of a demon master or being trapped in hell for eternity alone. Then the sound did come and it was much more horrible than he'd ever begun to imagine. A kind of dry scraping that dragged along the flagstone floor. It took a long moment for Aziraphale to identify. It was scales: the smooth belly of an unbearably enormous snake.

“Sssome might sssay _you_ are, angel...” a voice hissed in the dark. 

“Excuse me?” Aziraphale asked, using every inch of his courage to prevent his voice from shaking.

“You’re home,” said the voice and Aziraphale felt brush of slick, beaded scales against his wrist and then the barely there flicker of a forked tongue against the pulse point at the base of his throat. Perhaps it because linear time did not yet exist that he knew exactly what it would feel like before it came.

\---

HEAVEN  
(Earlier)

In the time of the WAR nothing was good. These days, the books always claim the forces of light won, but back then, before the Earth had even been breathed into existence, it was not so clear. It was not so clear that the WAR had finished, that it would ever finish, that when it did finish there would be a winner and whether that winner would be a good or evil, regardless of which side they had claimed to take at the start. 

Demons were new and very bitter. Angels were warriors and glad to show it off. There was a lot of fighting. Because the passage of time was much different then and the laws of physics only half formed, it had gone on forever. 

“We’re all going to die,” Michael had said. “There will be nothing.”

“I’ve killed you already a hundred times and it hasn’t stuck yet,” Beelzebub said, unconcerned. “I wouldn’t worry.”

“So, we’ll be killing each other endlessly?” Dagon said. She sounded a little more concerned than her comrade in arms. 

“Well, we could go back to dousing each other in holy water and hellfire,” Gabriel said.

“No!” Michael and Beelzebub said in unison. 

“My lord didn’t like it,” Beelzebub said. “Said he hadn’t gone to all the work of recruiting us just so we could be turned to soup.”

“_The_ Lord didn’t like it either,” Michael said, choosing rather pointedly not to expand on it any further than that. 

“Well, someone has to win,” Gabriel said, frustrated. 

“I think I know who it’s going to be-ee,” Michael said, in a little sing song voice, smiling meanly.

“Uh, no,” Beelzebub said.

Michael shrugged. “I’m just saying,” she said. “All things are happening at once. I’ve read the Old Testament. Spoiler alert - you don’t come out on top. You end up rather...underneath things.”

Beelzebub’s face took on a rather pinched expression. “I’m going to go speak with _my_ lord. We’ll get back to you.”

It took a few more centuries (if you would prefer to imagine time passing) before they were really done. Hell’s forces were infinite, but since maths wasn’t quite finished yet, Heaven’s forces were just that much more infinite. Were things not quite looking good for Hell? It’s hard to say. What could be said is that, if there’s anything more boring than living in peace eternally, it’s living at war eternally. 

Later, in a very different place and time, Aziraphale would describe his experience of the WAR to Crowley as a lot of ‘hurry up and wait’ and Crowley would describe the WAR to Aziraphale as FUBAR, terms they’d both learned watching an inaccurate procedural TV show about the US military that Crowley had predictably enjoyed and Aziraphale had predictably been indifferent towards. 

Beelzebub called Michael up on what was best described as _not_ a telephone. “Okay,” said the Lord of Flies. “We’ve got a deal to offer you.”

\---

Aziraphale was having holy military band practice with Hesediel and Jophiel. What they were really doing was gently avoiding duty on the front line, but from a distance it definitely looked like they were having holy military band practice. In fact, there were at least two harps present for every angel in attendance. 

“Heavenly host,” Michael said, nodding solemnly to them. Aziraphale, Hesediel and Jophiel all nodded back. Michael was flanked by both Uriel and Sandalphon, who were equipped with threatening clipboards. “The WAR is over,” she said. “We’ve won.”

Aziraphale blinked in surprise. 

Hesediel said, “I was just down there, it didn’t look like it.”

“Are you questioning the Decree?”

“From whom did it come?” Jophiel said, quite calmly. 

“Who do you think?” Michael said, waspishly.

Jophiel shrugged. Aziraphale was quietly jealous of her ‘way’ of being completely unruffled no matter the circumstances, always the surface of a still pool of water in a deep wood. “I shouldn’t like to assume,” she said. “I should like to know how this auspicious occasion came about.”

Uriel tapped her fingers against the clipboard and Michael cleared her throat. “Well, as it stands, Jophiel, the WAR has come to an end and we didn’t come here to speak to you about it anyway. You may return to your... harping. We’re here for Aziraphale.” 

Jophiel and Hesediel didn’t exactly drop their jaws in surprise, but it was a near thing. Aziraphale tried not to take offense. He usually felt a kind of pride in being the sort of angel whose name Michael might well have forgotten. He was of a better stock than the sort that preened for attention in the long galleries. 

“Aziraphale, we have a special role for you,” Uriel said, looking down at the clipboard. A flash of light bounced off the metal screws holding the clip top of the board in place, catching against Uriel’s cheekbone and shining into Aziraphale’s eyes. He blinked and saw soot black feathers in the patterns that lurked on the dark insides of his lids. “Aziraphale,” Uriel said, sharply.

“Come again?” Aziraphale said.

“As part of the treaty,” Michael said, “In order to bring an end to the WAR, we’ve made a treaty with-” Michael looked down surreptitiously. “Well, we’ve made a treaty and-”

“I’m sorry,” Aziraphale said, very politely. “Are you nervous?”

Hesediel and Jophiel hadn’t gone anywhere. “You’ve made a _treaty_ with Hell?” Hesediel said. 

“_You_ have,” Jophiel clarified. “You and, who... Gabriel?”

“Are you questioning the Decree?” Sandalphon repeated. His voice was shrill.

Jophiel’s face showed nothing, but Hesediel’s lips were pressed together in a thin line. 

There was a sound like feathers ruffling and Michael brushed an invisible fleck of dust off her sleeve. “Aziraphale, we’ve arranged that you shall go to hell... as an... envoy. And be placed in the care of a demon there... and you will live with this demon and you will... 

“Be a hostage,” Hesediel said. 

“Will you go away now!” Michael said. “You won’t be a hostage, Aziraphale. We won! Why would you need to... Look, you’ll be an envoy and... we arranged... for your security, to encourage just treatment... that you should be married.”

Aziraphale coughed, choking on nothing. Hesediel clapped him on the back. “Don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll sort this out.”

“I’m not...worried, I’m just...” Aziraphale said. “Why was I chosen?” 

“Oh,” Michael said, as though it hadn’t occurred to her this might be a question that would be asked. “Well,” she paused. “It’s just your ‘way’, I suppose. You won’t Fall, but you won’t undo them all or drag any of them Up or cause any nonsense.”

Aziraphale narrowed his eyes shrewdly. “My ‘way’?” he said, sniffing indignantly. He hadn’t been aware before this moment that anyone considered him having a ‘way’ and that his ‘way’ was apparently that on an ineffectual goody two shoes. He was equally offended and curious. 

“There,” she said. “Just like that.”

“Like what?” he said, flustered. “I’m not going to just... go sit down there in hell smiling kindly at a load of maggoty demons who’ve got to live in the damp, smelly hole of creation because they weren’t clever enough to keep their heads screwed on straight.”

Michael smiled at him. It was the first time he’d ever understood why she might have been chosen or made or however it had happened to be The Archangel Michael. She seemed to be looking not at or through him, but into him and the Light in her was shining out every secret thought Aziraphale had ever had. He swallowed hard and tried not to be afraid. A tear sprang to his eye.

“You know,” she said. “The others do not try not to be afraid of me. To them, fear just is and they feel it as they feel all things equally.” Her heard her voice some other place that was not his ears.

“I am... _like_ them? Is that what you’re trying to say?”

“No!” Michael said, exasperated. “You’re like...yourself. And angels are not generally known for cultivating the ‘self’. You have your own thoughts and ways of doing things and no one else in heaven has ever thought that a demon might have Fallen because he wasn’t clever enough not to.”

“Why marry us?” he said, forging ahead while is seemed he had the advantage.

“If we sent you any other way, you would be a slave.”

“But I _will_ be a hostage.”

“Don’t you think ‘insurance policy’ sounds better?”

Hesediel was glowing with righteous anger at Aziraphale’s shoulder. It felt like a warm candle: a pretty light, but ineffectual for lighting a whole room. “He’s only one angel. What “insurance” could he offer that they won’t kill him the minute he sets foot in hell to save the trouble of his upkeep.”

“Well then we’d have an excuse to come and win for real, wouldn’t we?” Uriel said, like this was obvious.

Hesediel gave a sharp snort of victory. “So, you admit the WAR isn’t really won?”

Michael shot him a look of vicious disdain. “You were enjoying it, were you? That’s why you’re up here on the highest circle of Heaven surrounded by harps?”

Jophiel spoke again, ignoring Hesediel and Michael’s little tête-à-tête. Her voice was thoughtful and somewhat distant. “But why would they want him in the first place?” she said. “What good is one angel for a hostage. How is _Aziraphale_ enough to keep the Host out?”

Michael’s face scrunched up with irritation. Aziraphale could see that she was warring with herself. She didn’t want to answer, but on some level, she needed Aziraphale to agree for this to work, she couldn’t just Order him Down. “What kind of Sister would I be if I sent him Down there to die after having promised him he would be safe?”

“May I just interject that you haven’t actually promised I’ll be safe yet?” Aziraphale said. 

“Ah...” Jophiel said. “I begin to see. One might call tricking him into that kind of unwilling sacrifice devious, cruel, evil even...”

“And should I, the Archangel Michael commit such a...” she coughed over the final word, “Sin.”

“You might well Fall?” Hesediel said, raising one thin eyebrow.

“I might well,” Michael said.

“But you Know you won’t Fall?” Jophiel said. “For it may be in your power to Know the shape of things?”

“I Know at least that I will not Fall-”

“Then why send him?”

“If they have no hostage then why should we not carry on the WAR, which we are sure to win-”

“It’s a paradox,” Aziraphale said, tiredly. 

“A what?” Hesediel said. 

“Do you not read any of the Texts on the formation of the laws of the universe?”

“No?” Hesediel said. 

Aziraphale sighed. 

“It’s not forever,” Michael said. “You know that the Lord works - the world is yet to come and when the world has come there will be no need of an... arrangement like this. It will not be long then until the true WAR that will end all wars.”

“What’s forever when time hasn’t even started yet,” Aziraphale said, shrugging. In his spirit, he had already packed his bags. “What’s forever? What’s a day?”

“You see!” Michael said, turning to Uriel and pointing at Aziraphale with a touch of unhinged vigour. “He says things like that! That’s why we’re sending him and not Sandalphon.”

“You were going to send Sandalphon!?” Jophiel said with no small part of alarm. “He’d Fall before they even did the handfasting.”

“Excuse me!” Sandalphon said, spitting with anger. “I am a True Servant of the Lord!”

“Well, you’re true a servant of something,” Hesediel said, rolling his eyes. 

\---

HELL

There was the flickering of the snake’s long, sinuous tongue, and then a change thrummed in the air, punctuated by the sudden beating of wings, feathers rustling in a non-existent breeze. 

“Oh!” Aziraphale said.

“What?” said the demon. 

“Sorry,” he replied, flustered and worrying about whether or not he should be concerned about being offensive. “I didn’t know that you still - I just assumed-”

“Oh,” the demon replied. “No, we don’t lose the wings when we Fall.”

Aziraphale swallowed. “Shall we go?” he said. “Michael is waiting.” 

“Oh-ho,” the demon said. “Shouldn’t want to keep an Archangel waiting.”

“Are you being sarcastic?” Aziraphale said.

The demon snickered. “Not used to a bit of light humour, are we?”

“Not used to the lesser forms of wit,” Aziraphale said, sniffing.

“You’re rather a feisty one...” the demon said, thoughtfully, after a moment of silence.

Aziraphale sighed. “I’m afraid that’s why they’ve sent me,” he said. Suddenly it occurred to him... “Why did they send you?” he asked. He only hoped the demon wasn’t practised at picking up on the naked vulnerability he knew must be quivering in his voice.

“Oh, they didn’t send me,” the demon said. “I put myself forward.”

“Why?” Aziraphale asked. It was a worrying answer. What kind of strange intentions might a creature of darkness who willingly stepped forward to bind himself to an angel have?

“Well, Azazel came down and said the WAR had finished, and we had a bloody awful board meeting, splitting up the duties of Hell - who’s going to be in charge of which circle, who’s going to be doing the paperwork and who’s going to be doing the torturing, etc. and this job came up - no paperwork, no torturing, a whole lot of accolades for not a lot of work - unless you’re planning to be a lot of work, I suppose. I thought I’d take my chances. That’s the long answer,” he said. 

“And the short answer?” Aziraphale asked.

“I was a bit bored,” the demon said.

“Hmm,” Aziraphale said, rather wishing he could see the demon. He wasn’t particularly good at sniffing out sin and lying was the hardest one of all since it could be such a grey area. “We really better go,” he said. 

The darkness of the Hall was unrelenting, though it didn’t seem to bother the demon in any manner. To lead Aziraphale through the black corridors, he had taken Aziraphale’s wrist in his... hand? It felt mostly like a hand, but there was something scaley about the texture of his skin and four distinct points of sharp pressure, like the prick of claws set against the inside of his wrist, where the skin was tender and thin. 

They came back to the door Aziraphale had first entered through. Michael was waiting precisely where Aziraphale had left her. She was easily distinguishable, glowing faintly, though the Light that glittered in her face and in the spokes of her halo was purely metaphorical, doing nothing to illuminate her surroundings. She held a long strip of fabric in her hands. The colour of it was not white but the colour of white things to come: snowdrops in early March, still underground; goose-down inside the pillow, before the calamus has broken the cotton casing and scratched a sleeping cheek; a beam of white light broken open into a rainbow spectrum between two prisms sitting on Newton’s windowsill in 1666.

Michael looked down at Aziraphale though he was taller than her by a few inches. There was no Gabriel, no Sandalphon, no Uriel, no clipboards. “Heaven appreciates...I appreciate your dutifulness, Aziraphale,” she said.

“I’m not being dutiful,” Aziraphale said, looking back up at her. Aziraphale had no way of noticing, but the demon and the Archangel both saw that his head was aglow with Light, a halo that, for a moment, outshined even Michael. “I am being brave.”

“Yes,” she said. “I can See that.”

She held out the strip of white cloth with two hands, open before her, so that there was a U of fabric between each hand and the cloth spilled to the floor, water-falling into eternity from either side.

Perhaps it’s worth stating at this moment, that the ceremony Michael was about to perform was not precisely a marriage as we on Earth would think of it. It’s only that there is no human equivalent, nor comprehensible translation for what she was about to do to/for/on the behalf of the angel and the demon. 

It was already an ancient and sacred ceremony at the time Michael performed it, which is really saying something, since it was, after all, before time began. For the purposes of this story, the word ‘marriage’ has been selected to give the reader the best chance of understanding the significance of events, but for interest, here are some other possible translations considered by scholars: binding, consortium, nuclear fusion, merger, singularity and perhaps the most accurate translation, though discarded on the basis of practicality, the entirety of the Spice Girls song ‘2 become 1’ played backwards at 49x speed. 

Aziraphale placed his left hand (sinistra) into the U of white fabric. The demon placed his right hand (dextra) over Aziraphale’s. Their hands crossed at the wrists, forming an X. In the Light of the strip of fabric, Aziraphale could finally see the demon’s hand. It appeared quite ordinary. Five fingers, palish skin. The demon’s fingers were a little thinner and longer than Aziraphale’s but otherwise, there was nothing to notice. The demon spread his fingers till his thumb was resting against Aziraphale’s thumb. Aziraphale relaxed his hand and let their thumbs link, pressing fingerprint to fingerprint. For a moment, he thought he could hear something, like the pages of a book ruffling, like a key turning in the ignition of a classic car. 

“Aziraphale,” Michael began. “Do you offer yourself, freely and entirely?”

“I do,” he said.

“Crawly,” she continued. Aziraphale realised with a start that, until now, he had not known the demon’s name. “Do you offer yourself, freely and entirely?”

“I do,” Crawly said. He managed, God knows how, to sound rather casual about it. 

“Aziraphale,” Michael continued. “Do you take this creature upon yourself, into yourself and through yourself, the whole of him within you, without fear or reservation.”

It wouldn’t work if he was lying and Aziraphale knew it. He squeezed his eyes closed and winced as he spoke, “I do,” but somehow, as the words left his mouth, a weightlessness came into his heart and he meant them, wholly, utterly and forever. 

Michael laid the left-hand side of the fabric across their linked hands, so that both endless streams of cloth now flooded down on Aziraphale’s side. There was a feeling an unbalance, of a capsized boat trying to right itself and Azirapahle shuddered, forgetting how to breathe properly.

“It’s alright,” the demon said. “You’re just holding us all on your own, it will get better in a minute.”

“Go on then,” Aziraphale said, panting. He wanted to scrunch his eyes shut against the too-much feeling that was rushing through him, threatening to pull him to the ground, but just like trying to stand on one leg with your eyes closed, he knew it would only make it worse.

“Crawly,” Michael said. “Do you take this creature upon yourself, into yourself and through yourself, the whole of him within you, without fear or reservation.”

“I do,” Crawly replied. There was not even a drop of hesitation in his voice. Michael took the right-hand piece of fabric and drew it across to Crawly’s side, from underneath the first piece, so the U closed into a loop around their hands, twisting right at the base of Crawly’s wrist. The feeling of terrible disequilibrium flooded away. For a moment, there was nothing, and Aziraphale could see Crawly stagger beneath the weight of both of their Beings and then the joining balanced on the apex of their wrists and air rushed back into Aziraphale’s lungs again.

There is no possible translation nor attempted translation for what Michael said next, for in the beginning there was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. This is the Word that Michael spoke over Crawly and Aziraphale’s joined hands, an utterance, not of Good or Evil, but of Existence and before the Word, both creatures went to their knees. Though or perhaps because they had collapsed together, the twist in the white cloth held true and thus they were Bound.

“It is done,” Michael said.

“I can tell,” Aziraphale said. 

“I didn’t know if it would work,” Michael said, relieved. “I thought it would, but I didn’t Know...” 

Crawly said nothing, and Aziraphale became suddenly and uncomfortably aware that the demon was suppressing some great and terrible emotion and that he was trying desperately not to allow Michael to see him feel.

“Well,” Aziraphale said. “I think I’ve got it from here.”

Michael’s eyebrows rose. 

“Thanks for everything, don’t forget to call.” he said, smiling as winningly as possible. He wasn’t quite clear on whether, unlike him, Michael could see in the gloom of the Hall. “....so you can go, now.” He made a gesture universally recognisable as ‘don’t let the door hit you on your way out’. 

Michael nodded once and then she wasn’t there anymore.

“Oh hell,” the demon said as the Archangel’s presence blinked out of the room. 

“Are you okay?” Aziraphale said. Their wrists were still joined by the white cloth, the only visible thing in the Hall, the ends of which were not in sight spilling to the floor, and away out the door and into the distance, presumably forever. 

“Apparently not,” the demon said. “You know, I’d rather you stop thinking of me as ‘the demon’.”

“Says you,” Aziraphale said. “You think of me as ‘angel’.”

“Angel,” Crawly said. Aziraphale had the distinct impression he’d raised one eyebrow. “Not ‘the angel’.”

“Fine,” Aziraphale said. “Crawly. I guess that fits. If you’re a snake,” he said.

“Am I?” Crawly said. Aziraphale could hear the smile in his voice. “Actually, you can call me Crowley, I prefer it.”

“Crowley?” Aziraphale said. “Do they let you do that down here? Just change your name if you feel like it?”

“They pretty well let you do whatever you like, as long as it’s not nice,” Crowley said. “Shall I show you around?” 

Aziraphale nodded his consent and they set off down the corridor. He could feel the warm skin of Crowley’s wrist against his, the fine little hairs on the back of his hand. As they walked, only the sound of Aziraphale’s footsteps bounced off the polished stone walls. It was hard not to think too hard about why that was. 

“Where are we?” Aziraphale asked, squinting. He could make out the vague shape of long hall of doorways, a series of utterly black rectangles standing out against charcoal grey. There were a few looming shapes that might have been furniture. “It’s not really much like the rest of Hell.”

“The Record Hall,” Crowley said. “It’s storage, basically. No one much relished the idea of you poking your nose around where all the real work gets done.”

Privately, Aziraphale suspected it was rather quite a lot more dangerous to let him loose amongst a load of archives than amongst the everyday demons doing their usual petty sins, but married or not, it was probably better not to let his every thought slip quite yet.

“Well what’s in them?” he asked, glancing towards Crowley. He’d thought his eyes might be adjusting but he couldn’t make out Crowley at all. Were there wings? Was that a long sinuous shape slinking into the distance? Was that another set of footsteps, echoing just after his own? It was too dark to tell. 

“Books, mostly,” Crowley said. “Most of them are just transcripts. There-” he said. He raised his right hand to point and Aziraphale’s left hand went with it, since they were still tied together. At least Aziraphale could tell what direction Crowley meant. “That one’s all the blasphemy that’s ever been committed or ever will be. That one is mostly diagrams - Profane Sexual Acts. That one is Swears. I don’t think they’re really all sinful, but I suppose Heaven doesn’t like to leave that kind of thing lying around up there. Gives people the wrong idea. Speaking of, that one is Wrong Ideas. It’s a big room, that.”

“Have you read from any of the rooms?” Aziraphale asked.

“No,” Crowley said, immediately. It was clear that lying came to him more easily than the truth. He was silent for a moment before he said, finally, “I’ve read some of the files in the Question Room.”

“The question room?” Aziraphale echoed. 

“Where they keep all of the Questions we asked the Lord. Back before...”

“...the ones that made you Fall?” Aziraphale spoke quietly. He couldn’t think how he should sound.

“The very sssame,” Crowley said. There was something in his voice, a very tired kind of amusement, or perhaps it was self-pity. Aziraphale didn’t think it was an emotion they had in Heaven. “The book of What Ifs is quite good, if you’re looking for some light reading,” he said, clearly hoping to put the subject to rest.

“I’m not really sure I should...”

“Ah, I suppose not,” Crowley said. “You might _wonder_ and then where would we be.”

“I wonder about things,” Aziraphale said, defensively.

“Do you?” he sounded genuinely surprised. “Anyway,” he carried on. “This is the kitchen. There’s a rather good sofa in there and there’s probably some manna in the fridge if you go in for that and that’s the bedroom.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale said, curiously. “Do you sleep?”

“For fun,” Crowley said. “Sloth, you know.”

“Of course,” Aziraphale said, a bit faintly. “I suppose I should refrain from it, then. Though I did always think it must be interesting to dream.”

“What if you were doing it to make your husband happy?”

“Huh,” Aziraphale said. “Perhaps. We won’t be using that excuse for all manner of sins, though. I feel I should warn you now.”

“There’s not much else we can do until the handfasting cloth fades out of reality,” Crowley said. 

They went into the bedroom. Aziraphale thought he could make out where the bed was, but he ended up banging his shin against the thing anyway. Crowley sat down next to him. Aziraphale thought he must be mostly man-shaped now, but his only evidence was how the bed shifted under Crowley’s weight as he sat down. Their hands lay bound between them. Aziraphale put his hand open against Crowley’s. Crowley turned his hand until it lined up with Aziraphale’s, palm to palm. His hand was warm - much warmer than an angel’s would be. It was dry and smooth, sun-heated somehow.

“What happened, before?” Aziraphale asked. “When you wanted Michael to go?”

“Ah,” Crowley said.

“You don’t have to tell me,” Aziraphale made himself say, though he was desperate to know.

“I hadn’t realised,” he said. “Before. That I was totally alone.”

“What do you mean?” Aziraphale said.

“That’s all,” Crowley said. “I was completely alone. You’ve never been alone. I remembered what it was like, before I Fell. It was just... there were all things, all of life, and everything yet to come and all my brothers and sisters and then there was nothing. Now there’s you.”

“You can’t feel the other demons?” Aziraphale asked, a little curious about the mechanics of it all, despite himself. 

“No,” Crowley said, a bit short.

“I can feel you, too, you know” Aziraphale said.

This seemed to surprise Crowley. There was a sudden tension in his fingers. “I’m sorry.”

“Why would you be sorry?” Aziraphale said. 

“Well, I can’t possibly imagine it feels good.”

“It does,” Aziraphale said. He thought he should say more, but there was no more in him than that, yet. The sound of movement came, cloth brushing against skin and the bed creaking beneath them. Crowley’s free hand was near Aziraphale’s face - he could sense it. The dark and the lack of sight made his hearing thrum with attention, his skin was alert to the slightest movements of the air. Crowley touched his finger tip to the skin just under Aziraphale’s jaw, the exact point he’d let his forked tongue flicker against before.

Aziraphale vibrated at the touch. It felt like more than he’d ever imagined, unignited nerves blinking online for the first time. It was unusual for angels to touch each other’s physical bodies, but Aziraphale supposed from what Crowley had said about being alone that demons could not stretch out and mingle their metaphysical Selves the way angels did in heaven. Crowley was unperturbed by Aziraphale’s shakily drawn breaths. He drew his fingers along Aziraphale’s brow, his nose, traced the shell of his ears, the two faint lines of his collar bones. “You’re very beautiful,” he said. 

“Am I?” Aziraphale asked, for it had never occurred to him to wonder if he was beautiful or not. 

“I don’t know,” Crowley said, almost laughing. “Yes. I’ve never thought about it before, but I’m sure you are. You smell like what I imagine a garden would smell like or books or something I can’t quite-”

Aziraphale knew what he meant, since Crowley smelled like leather and motor oil and the sugary burn of over-the-top cocktails and none of those things existed either. Aziraphale reached out to where he thought Crowley’s shoulder might be and touched him. It felt mostly like skin, but there was a kind of after-image of scales. He was sun warm there too and it felt good in the nearly cold shadows of the Hall. 

It had been hot in the rest of Hell, up against a hundred humid bodies in the airless, low-ceilinged tunnels he’d pushed through to make his way here. This was the opposite of that, cool, Crowley’s hands like a dry breeze in the desert. And coming here, Michael had been looming behind him the whole way, her wings out in a pure white arch above them as though daring anyone to get so much as the breath of a smudge on her. And now up against Crowley, he felt the opposite of that feeling too, not ‘you-daren’t-touch-me-or-mark-me-in-any-way’ but ‘please-touch-me-please-leave-some-evidence’. 

Without thinking anything of it, he let his angelic Self unfold around them, the whole universe of his Being, a hundred million points of Light, now Crowley’s also, because Aziraphale had vowed it so. 

“Fuck,” Crowley said, snapping away from him. He wrenched his arms protectively over his chest and Azirphale was pulled flat onto his face, since they were still bound at the wrist. “Shit,” Crowley said. “Sorry.”

“No,” Aziraphale said, pushing himself back onto his knees and adjusting the swathe of fabric from his robes that had bunched up around his middle. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that without asking you first. Perhaps we’ve gotten a bit carried away.”

“Carried away,” Crowley repeated, as though he were tasting the idea. He sighed, putting his arms down slowly till finally their linked wrists were hanging between them limply. Aziraphale waited, thinking he might be working himself up to saying something that had been weighing on him, but all he finally said was: “Go to sleep, angel,” he said. “We’ll talk about it in the morning.”

In the millennia to come, Aziraphale would learn not to let him get away with a dodge like that. But he didn’t know better yet, so he went to sleep for the first time and dreamed his first dream, which he didn’t remember, but left him with a strange taste in his mouth, acidic and sweet at once, like something very odd had been done to fruit. When he woke, Crowley was gone. 

Aziraphale felt round his wrist. The white cloth was still There though it was not there anymore. He felt a wave of relief, which he hadn’t quite expected, roll over him. It really had worked, for good. 

There was a kind of weak grey light now and he could see the room around him. He was lying on the bed, splayed sideways, a large vaguely soft square dressed in grey fabric. He was surprised to find that there was a large window to his left. There was no curtain, but the air outside was entirely still and there seemed to be no difference in temperature. He could make out a few squat shapes on the horizon which might be office blocks, but it was hard to say since they were wreathed in a thick, soupy, yellow-green smog which, unbeknownst to Aziraphale and indeed most of the denizens of Hell, had rolled right off the Thames in January 1880.

Across from the bed, were a variety of large rectangles covered over in grey dust cloths. Upon closer inspection, he discovered they were paintings. He pulled the dust cloths off, leaving them in a pile in the corner of the room before coming back to the paintings with a critical, fascinated eye. It took a moment for the three large canvases to resolve into a triptych evidently depicting Heaven and Hell. They were busy, horrible, complicated paintings, crammed with a thousand tiny figures: strange eggs, brightly coloured fountains, vicious little demons, tortured humans, mystical creatures eating each other. He found himself quite delighted by the meticulous fussiness of them.

He drew his robes up, pulling them around his shoulders against the coolness of the echoing Hall. The corridors went on forever. Aziraphale walked along the one that branched off the bedroom. Every now and then, there was an offshoot corridor. Some were only a few rooms long and some seemed to go on just as endlessly as the one Aziraphale had first set off along. 

In the eerie grey light, he could now read the signs above the doors. They said things like ‘Poor choices’, ‘Petty Crime’, ‘Despicable Crime’, ‘Self-doubt’, ‘Suicides’, ‘Vanity’ and so on and so forth, ranging wildly from the horrible to the innocuous and the specific to the general, with no sense of theme or organisation. 

After a while, despite his impeccable memory, he began to feel he might be lost among the vast number of dim, identical doorways. But as he had the thought, he came upon the door to the bedroom yet again. Though it had been previously flanked by ‘Audio-visual pornography’ and ‘Poison recipes’ it was now flanked by ‘Unrealised villainous plots’ and ‘Banned books’. He stuck his head inside to make sure. There was the bed, the rumpled grey sheets and the dust cloths in a pile. The painting glowing to itself in the colourless world of the Hall. 

Aziraphale stood in the corridor for a moment listening to the silence. He was resting directly outside ‘Banned Books’. Finally, he argued himself out of feeling guilty about it and went in. The walls stretched out for a long way, all lined with shelves. In the great distance, more grey light was falling leadenly into the room. If he squinted he thought he might be able to see the small square of another window facing in a different direction from the first but still somehow looking over the cement office blocks. 

He walked a little way and was surprised to find there were junctions where the room went on to the left and right through a maze of stacks. Without meaning too, he put his fingers out and let them drift along the bound spines of the books. They were all identical, black leather with stamped silver titles. Having never experienced any library or record hall not in the keeping of either Heaven or Hell, Aziraphale was not to know that there was anything unusual about the uniformity of the books.

He paused in surprise as his fingers brushed over a familiar title. He pulled the book off the shelf. 

“It’s the Bible,” he said to himself in confusion. “How could the Bible be banned?”

“Some of the humans don’t end up liking it,” a voice somewhere vaguely above Aziraphale’s left shoulder said, in a pleasant, matter of fact little tone. 

Aziraphale shot his gaze up the shelf in shock. There was a little... creature, there. It was grey, like most other things in the Hall and looked mousy. Well, there were small round ears and it was furry, anyway.

“Goodness, you gave me quite a fright,” Aziraphale said, inspecting the creature further. It was wearing a little hat and a vest with a scrawling embroidered golden script identifying it as a ‘record-keeper’. “Are... you a demon?”

“Oh no,” it said, mildly insulted. “We’re neutral. Have you never met one of us Up There? You smell like books, you must’ve been around them before now.”

“No,” Aziraphale said, vaguely. “I have read Texts, when they’ve been circulated, of course, but I don’t think we have so many. Or in such... variety.”

“Well, the Hall of Good Deeds isn’t quite as interesting, either,” the record-keeper said, in the tone of someone quite partial to their particular brand of work. “Now that I give you a good sniff, I think your bookishness might be in the future.”

“Yes,” Aziraphale said, sweeping his hand out to indicate the row after row of books. “I rather imagine so, seeing as I’ve nothing else to do with myself for an unspecified length of time.”

“You misunderstand me,” said the record-keeper, in its squeaky, knowledgeable little voice. “I mean the real future. Once time has begun.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale said, a little hesitantly. “You know about the future, then.”

“I know all of the records,” it explained. “And the records are outside time, just as we are now. It seems you will someday enter time and once you enter it, there will be books.”

“I see,” said Aziraphale. 

“You know of the future,” the record-keeper said, twitching its mousy little nose towards the Bible in indication. “You’ve read that, anyway.”

“After a fashion,” Aziraphale said. “I know the true Texts. But this,” he said, letting one finger slip under the cover. “It’s a human translation, is it not? Through their eyes.”

“Yes,” said the record-keeper. “That’s the King James version, but they’ve all been banned at one point or another. All the religious texts.”

“All of them?”

“The humans find it hard to agree on how to follow the rules.”

“There’s more than one way?” Aziraphale asked, confused. Then added, a little embarrassed. “I guess that’s the point. They don’t know. No one tells them, for sure.”

The record-keeper nodded its furry confirmation. “Give some of them a whirl,” the record-keeper said. “Fascinating stuff. I mean, you think you’ve made mistakes in your life and then you see what they’re all worshipping.”

Aziraphale didn’t let himself think too hard as he turned the first pages over, flipping through till the book fell open on a random page. _ ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.’_ A little too apt. He ran his finger across a line partway down the page _‘And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.’_ Even worse. He closed the Bible and put it back on the shelf.

He walked further along the shelves, still running his fingertips over the smooth bindings of the books, humming to himself faintly. The record-keeper scampered along the shelf just above his head, following him. “Would you like a recommendation?” the record-keeper asked politely. “I mean, besides the sacred texts.”

“I suppose I would,” Aziraphale said. “Maybe keeping in the same vein, nonetheless. I’m afraid I’ve probably not got the cultural capital to access a lot of the books in here yet. Too far outside my realm of experience.”

“Hmm, yes, for now I suppose that’s true,” the record-keeper said. “Shouldn’t you understand them anyway?” it asked. “Wouldn’t it be a part of your angelic nature to empathise no matter the circumstances.”

“Certainly,” Aziraphale said. “But I...” he was at a loss for how to explain what he wanted, having rarely entertained the concept that he should want anything for himself.

“Ah,” said the record-keeper. “I see. You don’t want to understand someone else. You want to feel understood.”

Aziraphale felt something catching in his throat. “Yes,” he said, quietly. “That’s exactly it.”

The record-keeper scurried down the stacks, making a few acrobatic little leaps, before finally pulling free a thin volume with its mouth and carrying it back up to Aziraphale at an encumbered pace. Aziraphale went to meet him halfway, and took the offered book with care as the record-keeper handed it over. “That one,” it said. “I think it’ll be just the ticket for your current situation. Try number fourteen.”

Aziraphale inspected the spine, finding the book to be titled ‘Holy Sonnets by John Donne’. Obligingly, he flicked it open to Sonnet fourteen. Since the record-keeper seemed to be waiting for something, Aziraphale read it aloud. His voice didn’t waver till the final quatrain:

“Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,  
But am betrothed unto your enemy:  
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,  
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,  
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,  
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.” 

“Oh,” he said finally. His hands were shaking a little. He pressed his hand to his mouth. “I didn’t think humans would really be able to...”

“Oh yes,” the record-keeper said. “They feel it all.”

Suddenly, the weak grey light from the far-away window flickered like a bulb going dead and then went out completely. The record-keeper squeaked in terror. “He’s coming!” it said. “You should hide!”

“Who?” Aziraphale said, clutching the book to his chest and spinning round on his heel. It was too dark now to see anything at all and he did begin to feel a little afraid because he didn’t know how he’d be able to find his way out and back to the main bit of the Hall if he couldn’t see anything and Crowley wouldn’t know where to find him considering the vast quantity of possible rooms he might have wandered into.

“Why, the Great Snake, of course!” the record-keeper said. Its terrified voice was quite far away now and going further fast. It must have been running for cover. “He’ll eat us right up if he spots us!”

“Do you mean Crowley?” Aziraphale called after it. “He won’t eat you! He’s my husband!”

It was too late, though. He couldn’t even hear the fading scrabbling footsteps of the little creature anymore. 

“I would, though,” Crowley said, softly, right in Aziraphale’s ear. 

“Argh!” Aziraphale shrieked. His wings shuddered with the surprise as he was very nearly jolted into flight. His feet left the floor for a good second. “Don’t sneak up on me!” he said, indignantly. 

“I’m just saying, the record-keepers are very crunchy.”

“Crowley!” Aziraphale said. 

“And when you eat one, another just kind of respawns out of the dust bunnies that collect under the shelves.”

“You can’t eat it,” Aziraphale said. “I liked it. It was sweet.”

“You’ve got the idea. Very sweet.”

“Not like that!”

You’re an angel,” Crowley said. “What should I eat if I refrain from anything you take a liking too?”

“Lord above,” Aziraphale cried. “I don’t know, just not anyone I’ve made a particular friend of, how about?”

“But there’s lots of record-keepers and they all look the same. How should I know if the morsel I corner is one of yours or not.”

“Go eat something else, then,” Aziraphale said, exasperated. “Where did you come from, anyway? And why did it go dark again?”

“It’s evening” Crowley said. “And I’m home from the office, honey! Why isn’t my dinner laid on the table?”

Aziraphale rolled his eyes. “Apparently, you scared it back into its hole,” he said. 

Crowley sighed rather sibilantly. “Well,” he said and Aziraphale felt the warmth of him draw very near. They must be nearly chest to chest. “What have we here?” Crowley tugged gently at the Holy Sonnets and Aziraphale let him take the book out of his folded arms, a little nervously. 

“I didn’t go looking exactly,” he said, defensively. “The record-keeper gave it to me.”

“Hey, I don’t make any rules,” Crowley said. “If you’ve got some broken rules about, you brought them with you from somewhere else.” He flicked the book open. The sound of the pages ruffling was louder in the dark. 

“Ooh,” Crowley said, evidently reading to himself. “Saucy. Nor ever chaste except you ravish me, eh? You know I can taste sins,” he said. Aziraphale held his breath for the flickering tongue, but nothing happened. Crowley was still busy reading, rifling through the pages. “And perceived sins,” he said. “Looks like this bad boy gets to be the pet peeve of a particularly prudish headmaster in the 1800s who just doesn’t ‘get it’.” There was a disturbance in the air, like he was shaking his head. When he spoke again, his voice was a little rueful. “I suppose about half the books here have got the same backstory.”

“Wait,” Aziraphale said. “If they’re banned, does that mean no one on Earth will even get to read them?”

“Oh no!” Crowley said. “Fret not, angel. They just get logged here if they’ve ever been banned so we can check them for sinful content. I mean, most of them haven’t ever been near a sin in their lives. And I think on Earth, getting banned ends up popularising them, if anything.”

“Oh, good,” Aziraphale said, instinctively and then he had to double check with himself whether that was a Good and Right opinion to have. “It seems like they end up being a rather finnicky bunch,” Aziraphale said, thoughtfully.

“Well,” Crowley said. “When the first and only mistake you ever make in your life gets you cast out of paradise, it does make you rather paranoid.” He spoke with such a sudden, bitter understanding that made Aziraphale feel somehow ashamed. Without thinking it through, he grasped Crowley’s hand and the demon squeezed back, with a surprised little sound.

“Shall we go out of here?” Aziraphale asked. “You can tell me about your day. Isn’t that the kind of thing spouses should do?”

“I suppose,” Crowley said, sighing. “Or we could go in the audio-visual room, and I could show you something really, really funny humans do with their bodies.”

“Go on then,” Aziraphale said, half-smiling. Crowley seemed to realise that Aziraphale couldn’t see and so kept their hands joined the whole way back out of the Banned Books room, their fingers linked tightly together and the phantom ribbon joining them whispering, cool and white, in the shadows. 

\---

It took what one might call a surprisingly long time for Aziraphale to confront Crowley on the topic of the darkness.

“It’s not because it’s evening,” Aziraphale said, folding his arms across his chest protectively when the light flickered out and Crowley reappeared from wherever he went every morning. “I know it’s not. When I’m relaxed I read at a rate of approximately one page per 4.8 seconds. And three days ago, I read about four thousand five-hundred pages before you came back. The next day, I read about two thousand pages. Today, I read less than a thousand! So don’t tell me night is falling down here in Hell, because the timeline is way off!”

“Why should we follow a day-night system at all?” Crowley asked. He seemed rather nervous.

“And what about how sometimes you don’t go away for quite a long time indeed, seems like it would really have to be more than a day, maybe two days pass, maybe three, I wouldn’t know because it’s dark the whole time, so how exactly does that work?”

Crowley edged towards Aziraphale, putting one hand carefully on Aziraphale’s shoulder as though trying to hold him back from thinking too much.

“And don’t come over here and whisper sweetly in my ear about how you know a room that has a very interesting painting in it we can go look at because I don’t want to hear it,” Aziraphale went on, shrugging him off. “I’ll stand there the whole time wondering why exactly it is that I can see the painting but if I turn around, I definitely won’t be able to see you!”

“Well fine!” Crowley wrenched back and snapped his fingers.

There was light enough, then. 

It was the harsh, fluorescent lighting of a hospital, of a hangover, it was the lighting in a Wallmart at three o’clock in the morning while you’re carrying a baby, screaming at the top of its lungs, and you haven’t really slept in four weeks. 

Aziraphale’s pupils contracted to pin pricks and he had to blink for a few eye watering seconds before he could even begin to make Crowley out. When he did see him, he felt he might scream in frustration, since the figure before him was not Crowley at all but an absolutely enormous black snake twisting in on itself, acres of jet black scales writhing and teeth as long as Aziraphale’s forearms. “Is thisssss what you wanted?” the monster hissed, the terrible rattle of his enormously amplified voice enough to shake plaster dust from the upper reaches of the ceiling down to the floor.

Aziraphale, having visited the ‘Very Bad B-Movie’ room on more than one occasion knew Crowley’s form for what it was. “Don’t be tacky,” he said, meanly. “That’s not your style, my dear.”

The lights snapped back out of existence. He could hear Crowley panting across from him.

Aziraphale put his hand out. It met not with scales, but the now familiar fabric of Crowley’s robes and Aziraphale said, “Don’t lie to me.”

Crowley huffed out a half-laugh. “I’m a demon,” he said. “What else should I do?”

“I’m not afraid of you,” Aziraphale said. 

“You should be,” Crowley said. “My job is to ruin you.”

“But you won’t,” Aziraphale said. 

“I’m trying!” Crowley said. “I’ve put you in a literal palace of sin, full up of the thing I first smelled out you would find most tempting - what more can I do?”

“I don’t know,” Aziraphale said. “Stop being so likable, I guess. Stop leaving me heart-wrenching pieces of music stolen from the future playing eerily down the halls when you leave in the morning, stop leaving me rooms of books, whether you think the content is heathen or not. It makes it all very easy to be holy about everything even if the source material is a bit black around the edges. Love upon love, forgiveness upon forgiveness.”

“I’m trying to corrupt you,” Crowley said, weakly.

“Stop lying to me. I’m not about to sin by falling in love with my husband. You said it yourself the first day. Is it really a sin if I’m doing it to make you happy? Is it really a Temptation if you’re doing it to make me happy?” Aziraphale said, taking Crowley’s wrists in his hands. “Let me see you.”

“You won’t like what you see,” Crowley was nearly whispering now.

“_Please_ stop lying to me,” Aziraphale said back, hushed. Their faces were very, very close together. Aziraphale kept his eyes as wide open as he could and imagined what he thought Crowley might be like from the hundred tiny pieces of evidence he’d collected, but it wasn’t enough.

“It’s not just my physical body that’s the problem, you get that right?” Crowley asked. “It’s just that, the self and Self - they’re too linked. I can’t unthink it. I can’t go back to how I was when I was an angel and my physical body was just an afterthought. And my Self - I can’t show you,” he breath was coming quick, panicky. “I can’t show you-”

“I know,” Aziraphale said. “But I could help you. You wouldn’t even have to turn the lights on. Let me do it.”

Crowley shook his head. Aziraphale felt it. He was practised now, after all - the movement of the air, the feathery touch of a few loose strands of Crowley’s hair that brushed ticklishly against Aziraphale’s cheek. 

“When will you trust me enough?” Aziraphale said. 

“I don’t know,” Crowley said. “I don’t know.”

\---

The next morning, the corridor was gone. There was only the main bedroom, the entrance hall, the kitchen which Aziraphale hadn’t been particularly interested in from the start and a few black hallways dead ending on ugly Grecian urns. Crowley hadn’t apparently been able to bring himself to take the painting away, which Aziraphale could now identify as a Bosch, since he’d read a few dodgy art history books on the subject and one very memorable case file of a curator/murderer in ‘Despicable Crimes’. It wasn’t quite silent today. There was a faint sound of wind, whistling as it caught on the corners of the outside of the buildings and whipped against the windowsills. 

He sat on the floor in front of the painting, cross-legged and looked at every little figure, writhing about in their strange horrors and pleasures with their mostly blank expressions. He felt, for the first time since the very beginning, a bit sorry for himself and then tried to stop, since it really wouldn’t do to Fall because he was pitying himself. He wasn’t sure if that was possible, but it was such an unpleasant, slimy emotion it seemed likely. 

For one moment, he contemplated leaving. What stopped him wasn’t the idea that the WAR would inevitably begin anew, but that if he went, he’d never see Crowley again. Well, hear him, anyway. Smell him, lay next to him in a bed, read while he lounged crookedly against the wall next to Aziraphale, offering snippy commentary. He thought of what his wrist might feel like, with the invisible white cloth of their Bond pulled to its absolute limit, the fuzzy space that was Crowley in his mind wrenched away, thinner and thinner, pulled out like spun sugar to the greatest possible distance before it hardens and snaps. The thought made him shudder all the way down to the tips of his wings and a few downy feathers even floated to the ground. He picked them up self-consciously and put them on his pillow for lack of anything else to do with them.

After a little more wallowing, he went into the kitchen. There was nothing in it except an extremely expensive looking red SMEG refrigerator and an oxymoronic coffee maker that was both very complicated and the kind you put pods in. Aziraphale inspected the coffee maker with no small amount of trepidation and was just about to press what he was almost certain was an ‘on’ button when he heard the sound of footsteps in the entrance hall.

“Good afternoon?” an unfamiliar voice called. “Anyone home?”

“Hello?’ Aziraphale said, smoothing his hair down and checking that the belt on his robes was tied nicely. He was quite shocked. There were no circumstances where he’d imagined receiving a visitor.

“Howdy!” the mysterious person said as Aziraphale came out into the entrance way. Aziraphale raised one eyebrow. There was a large toad in the main room. It gave Aziraphale a little wave and what Aziraphale thought might be an attempt at a smile.

“Uh,” Aziraphale said. 

“Sorry,” the demon said. “Is howdy not what you say? I thought your kind went in for that sort of thing.”

“What kind of—?” Aziraphale began again.

“It’s the body, isn’t it.” the demon interrupted. “Would have thought you’d be used to it with Crawly around, but...”

“No, no, it’s not—” Aziraphale started to say, but shortly there was a rather pale, sickly man with a wet eyes peering at him through the gloom. He was visibly dirty and Aziraphale felt he could see the smell of the man from here. Finally, he got a complete sentence in edgewise: “Sorry, to whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?” Aziraphale asked.

The man gave an awkward little dip which Aziraphale sensed was a mockery of the concept of bowing. “Hastur,” he said. “Duke of Hell, at your...ah, well I thought I would call in on the new neighbour. Is Crawly...not...?”

“No,” Aziraphale said, not quite managing to keep the bitterness out of his voice. “He’s not in at the moment. Can I get you something?” he asked, hoping quite strongly the answer would be no since the last thing he wanted was for this limp demon to follow him in the kitchen and watch him not be able to use the coffee machine. 

“I’m sure you don’t mind, but—” the demon turned round and beckoned to someone out in the mist that lay beyond the Hall. “He’s alone!” he shouted. 

“Oh sugar,” Aziraphale said. 

Several things happened at once. More demons in the form of rather large pests began to appear through the open front door, Aziraphale reached into the empty space just to the left of his hip and withdrew a flaming sword from where it had been waiting one inch to the side of the present dimensional plane and Hastur launched himself at Aziraphale’s throat tongue first with his grasping hands very shortly behind them. 

The tongue was lopped off first with an unpleasantly wet sizzle. The hands went next, as easy as one, two. There was quite a lot of screaming and chaos from then on. 

Aziraphale made rather short work of Hastur - not quite bringing himself to kill the sod, but he was certainly incapacitated. Unfortunately, both a large, furry spider and a skink of immense proportions joined the fray with little hesitation. There was a lot of scuttling and a few too many limbs for Aziraphale’s comfort. He slid his right foot back to get a better stance - he was aware that the design of the Hall made it much too easy to be backed into a corner.

He spun under the spider, getting a good firey gash in as he passed under the belly of the thing, but the skink was closing in from the other side - its bright blue tail lashed out and caught Aziraphale across the forehead, just over his eye. Bright golden ichor ran freely from the wound, dripping into his eyelashes and making him blink from the sting. At least he was a better position now, being backed toward the door out of the Hall rather than one of the short, dim corridors. 

Unfortunately, without the wall to his back, he was open to attack from the other demons, who began to advance rapidly. A huge white rat came scrabbling over the stone floor and Aziraphale waited until it was close enough that he could see his own reflection in the creature’s beady, pink eyes before he swung the sword, two handed, in a practised arc, slashing through the mangy fur from shoulder to belly. A stench poured from the wound rather than blood and Aziraphale gagged. He rubbed at the ichor in his eye, since he could barely see out of it now and in the momentary distraction, he felt a claw hook into his side. 

He let out a shriek of rage and stabbed unseeing behind himself. His sword connected and with a vicious sense of victory, he smelled the burning of flesh, but as the demon fell away, it’s claw tore free of his side and the pain made him drop down to one knee. 

Hastur was struggling to his feet and though his hands were gone there were strange, webbed appendages emerging from the gory stumps of his wrists. He was flanked by the spider and a scuttling woodlouse. Aziraphale planted his sword in the floor to give himself leverage enough to stand but as he was dragging himself up, the rat regained enough strength to lash out at him, teeth snapping in his face. Aziraphale overbalanced and went sprawling on his back, not quite managing to hold in the small, hurt sound as his torn open side connected with the stone floor. Ichor splashed onto the stones, gold against black. Aziraphale’s training did not fail - he kept a grip on the sword, but now he was prone and four visible demons were advancing on him, with more likely out of his line of sight. 

“Dear Lord,” Aziraphale pleaded, not certain whether it was a curse or a prayer. 

Suddenly, the lights flickered and went out. It was pitch black. If Aziraphale had been able to hold his own hand in front of his face, he wouldn’t have caught even a shade of a glimpse of it. The sword still flickered, but it’s light was perfectly self-contained and did not penetrate the darkness. Aziraphale’s wrist felt warm. _Thank you, thank you, thank you,_ Aziraphale thought, not at all sure who his gratefulness was directed towards. 

“This is one of Crawly’s tricks,” Hastur’s voice barked in the dark. Aziraphale was pleased to hear the shake of fear in it. 

Then the sound came, the whispering of scales sliding across the stone floor. It was so familiar now and with the sound came a great sweeping relief that was nearly embarrassing in its intensity. 

“Iss that a flaming sssword, angel?” Crowley’s voice was like silk. “Should I be worried?”

“It’s not for you,” Aziraphale reassured him, flustered. “It’s for any unsavory characters! Surely you can at least admit I was right to bring it considering our current situation.” The sound of Crowley slithering into the room was coming from all around him, which Aziraphale took to mean he was large enough in his current form to wrap in a circle right around the room. 

“Well, I suppose I wouldn’t like to think of myself as unsavoury,” Crowley said. “I’ve always imagined that people would say things about me like ‘I could just eat him up with a spoon’.”

There was a rather taken aback scoff, slightly to the left and a good foot behind Aziraphale which didn’t emanate from either angel or snake. Aziraphale took a chance and blew out the sword so he couldn’t be tracked by the flames. With any luck he could shuffle out of the way till he bumped into Crowley and then at least he wouldn’t be quite so vulnerable to attack. He started edging towards the wall - he’d been nearly in the middle of the room, so any direction would do. 

After a moment of very careful, silent shuffling, he bumped into something. He didn’t think it was Crowley. He put one hand back and his hand touched what could only be described as a carapace. “Whoops-a-daisy,” Aziraphale said. 

“Gotcha,” said an insectoid voice.

“I think you’ll find that’sss mine,” Crowley hissed and he struck. Aziraphale didn’t see it of course, but he heard it - the rush of air as the coiled muscles suddenly released, the sound of fangs sinking several inches through chitin. 

Aziraphale rolled out of the way and continued his crawl towards the edge of the room and Crowley got very busy. Aziraphale put his hand on what he quickly identified as a rat tail and stabbed out with all the accuracy he could muster. The rat gave a rather satisfying squeak of pain and terror. 

The light flickered and suddenly, Aziraphale could see again. There were only three demons left standing - Hastur, mostly in his horrible toad form again, a giant millipede which was currently engaged with Crowley and an ugly blue crab. The crab’s claws were wet with golden ichor. 

“Pest,” Aziraphale directed at it, under his breath. It was the likely culprit responsible for the gash in his side. Hastur was looking rather worse for wear, but the crab had only the one wound that Aziraphale had inflicted before, so Aziraphale went after it. 

It scuttled off behind the millipede as it saw Aziraphale coming. _Coward,_ Aziraphale thought, uncharitably. He leapt at it, over the squirming length of the millipede, letting his wings beat once to allow him to cross a good half of the room in one jump. His sword reignited in mid-air and Aziraphale skewered the larger claw right through as he came down on the creature and pushed on, thrusting the sword down through the crustacean’s shell, pinning the claw against the body. The Sword sank and good inch into the floor with a ‘twang’.

At that moment, Crowley successfully dispatched the millipede - it was now in two pieces. Azirphale jerked his sword free of the crab and spun around, feet sliding back automatically into a stronger stance, but there was no one left besides Hastur, who was struggling to stay on his feet and flickering oddly, like he couldn’t quite hold his shape. 

Crowley’s massive black head was descending towards Hastur and Aziraphale could feel his all encompassing desire to bite the toad’s head right off so strongly it was nearly his own, but to Aziraphale’s surprise, Crowley stopped just as his head drew level with Hastur’s. His tongue flickered out, tasting the air.

“You’re frightened?” Crowley said, with some measure of surprise. 

Hastur’s shivering silence was answer enough.

“I ssuppose you’re thinking you’ve never sseen thiss sside of me?” Crowley mused. Just one of his luminous, golden eyes must have been the size of Aziraphale’s head. “I mussst admit, I haven’t really sseen this sside of myself. Let’ss be clear. The bosss isn’t happy you thought you’d take yourself over here and try to win some unnecessssary accoladess. Maybe you need to read the briefing notess on why the angel is here, again. But he issn’t to be touched. And I find my sstake in the matter has become rather personal. Ssso get the fuck out and take whatever’s left of your lackeys with you.”

Hastur gave him one jerky nod of his wobbly toad head and then leapt towards the door. Aziraphale was in the way, but he didn’t move an inch and Hastur went around him, not meeting his gaze. 

“You’re hurt,” Crowley said, accusatorily. 

“I was doing my best,” Aziraphale said. “You saw me with the flaming sword! There were at least six of them.”

“Why didn’t you call for me right away?” Crowley asked. “I would have come.”

Aziraphale didn’t want to look into Crowley’s watchful, yellow eyes any longer. He stared at the wall as he answered, “If I had called you and then you hadn’t come I would have...” words failed him. He would have what? Been embarrassed? Been a fool? Been utterly, devastatingly heart-broken. 

The light went again. Crowley was up against him, putting his fingers over the gaping wound in Aziraphale’s side and Aziraphale let himself sag into Crowley’s arms. There was a hot kind of magic in the air, shimmering for a moment, and Aziraphale felt his skin begin to knit back together. It was too much, too intimate, like he was being licked from the inside out and Crowley’s hands were everywhere, cupping the back of his neck, soothing a hand down Azriaphale’s back, brushing curls stuck down with sweat back from his forehead. 

“I’m sorry,” Crowley said.

“What have you got to be sorry about?” Aziraphale asked. 

“If we hadn’t quarrelled and I hadn’t left the place unlocked like I did, this never would have happened. I thought you would just… I thought you would go back.”

Aziraphale blinked. “There’s a lot to unpack there,” he said. “Firstly, that’s an awful apology, you can’t say ‘if we hadn’t quarrelled’ because that makes it my fault too.”

“Well, it was my first one,” Crowley said. There was a smirk in his voice. “Maybe I’ll get better with practise.”

“And what do you mean ‘go back’?”

He could feel Crowley start to pull himself away. Before he’d even thought through what it might mean all the way through, Aziraphale was clutching at Crowley’s robes, holding him in place. “It’s okay,” he said. “It’s okay.”

“Did you even know you were trapped here?” he asked. 

“No,” Aziraphale said.

“You never tried to leave?”

“No,” Aziraphale promised. “Are you even sure I was trapped?”

“I just thought I would pull up the barriers and you’d go, I really did. Didn’t you feel the wind this morning?”

“I heard it,” Aziraphale said. “I didn’t think anything of it. You left the painting.”

“Don’t you miss heaven?” Crowley asked and Aziraphale could have choked on the unsaid words Crowley left handing in the air _‘because I miss it all the time’._

“Of course I do,” Aziraphale said, pressing further into Crowley, letting his forehead settle on Crowley’s shoulder, not knowing how to make it better in any other way. “I didn’t expect it to be like this,” he said.

“No,” Crowley murmured. “I didn’t either.”

“You’re not in heaven,” Aziraphale said. “So, I didn’t go.”

“That much?” Crowley asked. “So soon?” His voice was full of yearning. It hurt Aziraphale’s throat to hear it. “You wouldn’t go because I can’t follow you?” When he spoke, his breath ruffled Aziraphale’s hair very slightly. It was the first time in the history of the universe that any being ruffled another being’s hair with their breath and noticed it.

“It feels like it’s been a long time,” Aziraphale said. “Or it will be.”

“Huh,” Crowley said. “I hadn’t quite thought of that.”

\---

“Why don’t you have some of them visit you?”

“Who?” Aziraphale asked. 

They were lying in two deck chairs in front of an absolutely enormous painting of the sea, stretching out, blue-grey and rolling further and further into the distance, pushing sideways, white caps spilling over the gold edges of the frame. The horizon line was hazed with clouds – it was not quite clear where the sea stopped and the sky began. All Aziraphale had been able to think about since they’d sat down was the concept of forever. 

Crowley had tried to explain that a woman had painted it and since it was so obviously about longing and a kind of frustration that can’t be satisfied, some humans had thought it was rather naughty and thus it was archived in the Hall. Aziraphale couldn’t understand why a woman’s longing might be dangerous enough for Hell. It’s important to remember, no matter how strange it seems, that at this point he had still never met a human and no premonition, no forward echoing, is enough to explain us.

“Some of the other angels,” Crowley said, hesitantly.

Aziraphale turned to look at Crowley, though of course he could not see him. “You want me to invite other angels, from Heaven, down here?” he said.

“You’re lonely,” Crowley said. 

“I’m not-”

“Don’t even try, angel. I walked into the kitchen the other day and you were hosting the fifth bi-weekly convention for the record-keepers. There were fourteen of those things scampering around, putting their musty little paws into my things and giggling to each other. You were making them coffee!”

“They taught me how to use that ridiculous machine!” Aziraphale said. “It was only polite.”

Crowley was quiet for a long minute. Aziraphale stared at the place he couldn’t see Crowley’s face and imagined his strange, gold eyes - the infinitesimally small glimpses he’d had of his demon. The glow of the painting poured shadowy blue across Aziraphale’s face like light streaming through water. “I don’t want this place to change you.” Crowley finally said. 

Aziraphale sighed. “I don’t think you mean that,” he said.

“I do!” Crowley said, affronted.

“You know this will end, don’t you?” Aziraphale asked.

“How so?”

“God is building a whole world and putting… more creatures in it. Humans. And plants and animals and all kinds of things. You must know that. That’s why there’s a Hall.”

“Obviously, but what are they to do with us?”

“Well they’re the real WAR,” Aziraphale said. “We’ve got to fight over them. Over their… souls, I suppose.”

“I’ve never heard anyone explain it like that,” Crowley said, thoughtfully.

“There won’t be any need for us - for our ‘little marriage arrangement’ once the Lord has made the world.”

“Don’t say marriage like that: ‘marriage arrangement’. It’s our marriage, that’s it.” 

“Okay,” Aziraphale said. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, just don’t – it’s ours.” Crowley was hurt. Aziraphale put his hand over his face so Crowley couldn’t see how feeling it made him feel, even though it didn’t matter because everything between them in the white cloth of their bond anyway and that was the point, wasn’t it?

“I’ll invite some angels down,” Aziraphale said, not quite managing to scrub all the apology out of his voice. “So, I don’t get too lonely.”

“Good,” Crowley said. “Those blasted record-keepers can all put on little aprons and serve you coffee on big platters. I know _they’re_ desperate for more company, anyway.”

\---

“Oh,” Hesediel said, pacing round the perimeter of the entrance hall like a dog looking for a rat. “It’s clean!”

“Crowley isn’t really one for clutter,” Aziraphale said. “Sorry about the light. This is really as bright as it gets.”

“You can’t just miracle in a little more light?” Jophiel said, even as she snapped and the atrium filled with a warm golden glow. “That’s better!”

In heavenly light, the dark grey stone had a sheen to it that reminded Aziraphale of snake scales. He swallowed. 

“It smells like old paper,” Sandalphon said, scrunching up his nose in distaste. The condition for Hesediel and Jophiel being allowed to come was that they should be chaperoned by someone more ‘trustworthy’. Arguments suggesting that accusing certain angels as not being as trustworthy as others might, in fact, be quite blasphemous were summarily dismissed. Hesediel had been put out, but he always was, so it had little effect.

“That’ll be all the books!” Said the record-keeper, holding the coffee tray over his head.

“Who’s Crowley?” Hesediel asked, inspecting one of the polished, black Grecian urns which had fancied themselves up a little for the occasion and now sported slightly eerie, sinuous designs in copper twining around the necks and bases. 

“My husband,” Aziraphale said. “The demon?”

“Oh right!” Hesediel said. “What’s he like?” the tone of his voice was pure gossip. Aziraphale knew that every single scrap of detail he gave was going to be broadcast by trumpet through every circle of Heaven within thirty seconds of Hesediel’s return. 

“Uh,” Aziraphale said, stalling, trying to think of something innocuous to say.

“What’s this about books?” Jophiel blessedly cut in. “Where are we?”

“It’s the Record Hall,” Aziraphale said. “They keep track of everything that’s ever been considered sinful and it all gets recorded here.”

Sandalphon sniffed with utmost disapproval. “They let you wander around in here unsupervised?”

“Excuse me,” the record-keeper said. “What am I, chopped liver? Of course he’s supervised! I’d never let him put something back out of place!”

“And of course,” Aziraphale said, laughing nervously. “I’d never actually read the archives! Who knows what I might see!”

“Hey,” the record-keeper said. “What about-” Whatever it had been about to say, its squeaky response was viciously cut off by Aziraphale delivering a swift kick to its furry stomach.

“You’re on my side, right?” Aziraphale hissed under his breath to the creature. “Who keeps you from being snapped up in the hungry unhinged jaws of your local giant snake, hmm?” Louder he said, “Why don’t you go and bring the manna out of the kitchen, my dear?”

The record-keeper left the coffee tray on top of one of the larger urns and skittered out of the room, whiskers drooping. 

Once he’d gotten out that first lie, it was as though he’d broken the seal and he could barely speak but for lying. 

No sense in telling them that he was in the Record Hall because his husband had thought he might be able to Tempt Aziraphale into sin by showering him with raunchy books but it hadn’t worked – not because Aziraphale hadn’t been Tempted, but because he’s liked the demon too much for it to really be sin. He went with Crowley’s old lie about it being away from the important demon business for that one.

Had he ever had any trouble? Of course not, it was always silent as the grave.

What did he and Crowley talk about? Not much, they barely spoke.

Was Crowley cruel to him? He was barely around enough to have any time to be cruel. He seemed very busy.

“What does he look like?” Jophiel asked suddenly. She was watching Aziraphale rather shrewdly and he knew she knew he was lying through his teeth, but better this way than let Sandalphon catch on to even a hair’s breadth of Aziraphale’s true feelings on the subject: that Aziraphale would rather cut Sandalaphon down right now with the flaming sword than let anyone hurt a single hair on Crowley’s unseen head.

“Uh,” Aziraphale said. Perhaps there was a place for truth here after all. “I’ve never seen him.”

“Excuse me?” Sandalphon said. “So, you barely speak, he’s never around and in fact you haven’t ever actually even seen him? You know this is all going to fall to pieces if you aren’t actually married to a demon, but are in fact just inhabiting a disused storeroom in Hell for no good reason? I though Michael herself took you down here and did the deed. What’s going on?”

“No, no,” Aziraphale said, hurriedly. “It’s not like that. We’re really married. See?” He held up his wrist and the white fabric that joined them flashed obligingly: mysterious, not-quite-there, the purest and most beautiful colour. 

“Oh!” Hesediel said, sucking in a breath of surprise. Jophiel just stared at him, steadily. He’d only confirmed something she’d suspected all along. Sandalphon blinked, like the sun had caught too bright in his eyes, hurting him. 

“He _has_ been around here,” Aziraphale carried on. “I just haven’t actually looked at him with my eyes. When he’s here, there’s no light. He keeps it completely dark.”

“That’s weird,” Hesediel said. “Isn’t it? Maybe he’s some kind of horrible monster. I mean, I saw a few ugly fellows on the way here, I can tell you that. I was gagging! Wasn’t I, Jo?”

“No, no,” Aziraphale said, “That’s not it, I know he’s a monster. I mean. He’s a big snake. I can tell from how he feels.”

“How he feels?” Jophiel mouthed at him, raising one dark eyebrow.

“A big snake,” Sandalphon said, disgusted. Luckily, he wasn’t paying any attention to Jophiel. “You’re married to a big snake?”

“Not really,” Aziraphale said, frustrated. “I’m not explaining it correctly. The demons can all shapeshift. From what I can tell, when no one’s looking at him, he’s kind of nothing – or everything. I mean. He’s got wings too.”

“How do you know if he has wings if you’ve never seen him?” Hesediel asked. “I would have thought they didn’t get to keep the wings after… well, you know.”

“They’re black,” Aziraphale said. “I think they just go black when they Fall. He’s shed a few feathers in our bed and they look just like mine, really.”

“Your bed?” Jophiel mouthed again, “That you share?!” her eyebrows climbed higher. Aziraphale studiously avoided holding her gaze.

“It’s not right, a demon having wings,” Sandalphon said, blessedly ignorant of the important things, as always. Nevertheless, Aziraphale needed to shut his own damn mouth if he was going to get through this unscathed. 

“I don’t think it’s really down to you to decide,” Hesediel said, haughtily. “Maybe if _you_ switched sides and climbed up the ranks in Hell, then you’d get your fair say.” 

Sandalphon glared daggers at Hesediel. 

Aziraphale snorted. Maybe he had missed them after all. 

Thank God in Heaven, they got into the topic of gossip from back home with a little steering and that could keep them all going for hours. Even Sandalphon was not immune to a love of office gossip, which seemed built into the fibre of angelic beings right along with Holy Love. 

By the evening, Sandalphon had consumed three whole jugs of manna by himself and was consequently snoring in the corner. Hesediel had been unable to help his curiosity and had gone off to look through the record rooms the second Sandalphon had nodded off. Aziraphale could hear him reading the inscriptions above the doors with scandalised glee, growing more and more faint as he walked off. Aziraphale sent a record-keeper after him so he wouldn’t get lost. 

“You love him?” Jophiel asked, the moment Hesediel was far enough away they were both certain he wasn’t likely to overhear them. It wasn’t that he couldn’t be trusted, but he definitely couldn’t keep his big mouth shut. 

Aziraphale nodded pitifully. 

“And it’s not an angelic love – not a part of your love for all things.”

“No,” Aziraphale said. “It’s only ours. Only mine and his.”

“You know he feels the same?”

Aziraphale held up his wrist again, twisting it in the glow from Jophiel’s Light so that skittering rainbows bounced off the there-but-not-there fabric of their bond. “I know,” he said. 

“Then you can’t let him get away with… this bullshit of hiding in the dark.”

Aziraphale stared at the black floor, the overlapping tiles, snaking away into the dim halls of the house. “He has a broken heart,” Aziraphale said. “What if I can’t fix it?”

Jophiel shook her head. Aziraphale heard the movement of her perfect, shiny black fringe swishing and then settling again across her forehead and it sounded like sympathy. He was very good at hearing what someone’s face was doing, these days. “Don’t,” he said. “Don’t feel sorry for me. This is-” he laughed. “Somehow, I can honestly say that I think you should be jealous.”

“I don’t know what to tell you,” she said. He could feel her wings over them both, a protective instinct. Aziraphale had once thought them the loveliest things in existence, so purely Good was Jophiel, but now he knew that sometimes a thing that was not all Good was better. “All I can say is, I don’t think hearts really work like that.”

“I hope you’re right,” Aziraphale said.

“Because if you want to survive what’s to come, with him, there can’t be anything between you,” she said.

Aziraphale stiffened. “Why not?” he asked, almost angry. 

“How long are you planning to wait?”

He exploded with defensive anger. “Must everything always be so clean and true,” he spat out, vicious as he’d ever been. “Why shouldn’t there be dark corners we don’t look at? He’s a demon and I’m an angel. Perhaps he’s right and if I go looking around in the dark with a flashlight, I really will find something I’d wish I hadn’t stumbled across.”

“You’re the expert now,” Jophiel said, standing up. “I’m just another boring old angel of the Lord. But you’re not all Hers anymore.” She kissed him on his forehead. Her Light went out and the Hall was dim and grey again

“Sandalphon,” she said, kicking him in the shin. “Get up. The demon is coming home. I can smell sulphur. We’d better go.”

Hesediel appeared in the doorway. “Fascinating stuff!” he said. “Did you go in the audio-visual room?”

Aziraphale just shrugged tiredly. “We must do this again soon,” he said. 

“Must we,” Sandalphon said with a yawn, irritated.

“Send Uriel, next time,” Aziraphale suggested. “At least she can handle her drink.”

“Ugh,” Sandalphon said. “Rebel.”

“Don’t be rude,” Jophiel said. 

Aziraphale didn’t take it personally. In some black way he wished he was a rebel. It would almost be easier to just have it all done with and Fall. But he knew he wouldn’t. The Grace in him went all the way down. He left a trail of it all over everything he touched, like a snail. He Loved and he Loved and he loved. He couldn’t help himself. Sometimes he dreamed about it, a silvery smear across the Hall, across the paintings and the books, stamped on the furry backs of the record-keepers and slathered over the bloody coffee machine and all over Crowley’s skin, of course, which he saw only in his dreams. And Crowley _was_ a rebel all the way down, he couldn’t help himself either. God, it looked so good, those silver streaks of Grace beading on the impermeable surface of shiny black scales that ran down the length of Crowley’s back, dripping from elegant fingertips of Crowley’s perfectly ordinary hands. 

“Thanks for coming!” Aziraphale said, forcefully. He felt like he could sleep for a week. The little party of angels stepped over the threshold of the Hall, disappearing instantly into the smog. All the light flooded right out of the Hall after them. 

“I thought they’d never go,” Crowley said, a scant inch from Aziraphale’s ear.

Aziraphale turned into him, let Crowley gather him up. 

“Are you okay?” Crowley asked. “Did that idiotic one say something? He tasted like burnt sugar, it was disgusting.”

“Just family, you know how it is,” Aziraphale said, sighing. 

“I suppose so,” Crowley said. “At least they didn’t try to eat me like mine did you.”

They felt a long way away already. The weight of Jophiel’s questioning was easy enough to push under a rug somewhere.

Aziraphale put his mouth against Crowley’s collarbone and licked him. He was sun-hot as always, invoking the texture of scales somewhere always in the back of Aziraphale’s mind and he smelled more like the mineral tang of rocks baking in the desert at noon than he did sulphur. “Take me to bed, demon,” Aziraphale murmured.

“Don’t mind if I do,” Crowley said.

The grey sheets were cool as Aziraphale shimmied out of his pooling white robes – he’d put on his most voluminous ones for the visit. Crowley helped him along, putting his mouth open against Aziraphale’s stomach as soon as it was revealed. “Mmm,” Crowley said. “So soft.” He ran his fingers over Aziraphale’s milky thighs, rubbed his hands between Aziraphale’s legs, touching every part of him and Aziraphale did the same in return, pushing Crowley’s robes down over his shoulders and kicking them off the bed, mouthing at his neck, feeling for the places that were scales, the places that were feathers, the places that were skin, how they shifted with Crowley’s desire and with his own imagination. 

He ran his fingers through Crowley’s long hair, which was hanging down his back today and Aziraphale twined it around his fingers, used it to anchor himself in place so they could push together, every bit of body lined up, like a reflection and they were kissing, mouth to mouth, harsh breath shared out between two, skin, skin skin, touching and touching, Crowley’s tongue in his mouth and Aziraphale’s hands in Crowley’s hair, pulling him even closer, not giving an inch, he could almost cry at the copper colour of Crowley’s hair— 

He gasped in a breath and tried to retreat from the thought. It was too easy like this, so easy to See, even though he tried with every fibre of his Being not to look, but his wings were over them, his mind was blown open with the sensation of Crowley’s body everywhere against his own, they were so close, so close he might as well just—

He rolled back, breaking the kiss, trying not to jar Crowley, who was slow to let him go. “Give me a minute,” Aziraphale said.

“Okay,” Crowley said, panting. “Sorry, okay, okay, can I still…” He’d left one hand on Aziraphale’s stomach, like he was afraid Aziraphale might slip from existence if he let go completely. 

“Of course,” Aziraphale said. He used the light touch of Crowley’s fingers to help, to drag himself back to the physical plane. _Only the body,_ he told himself, sharply. _You’re only a body. You’ve only got five senses and you’re only allowed four of them._

Crowley knew what he was doing with the darkness trick. If Aziraphale could see him, he’d never be able to stop himself from Looking. 

“Okay,” Aziraphale said. “We’re good.” 

Crowley moved up over him. His breath was gentle on Aziraphale’s cheek. His hair brushed Aziraphale’s shoulder and Aziraphale had no idea what colour it was. “We’re good,” he repeated. Crowley leaned down and kissed him again, softly, softly, the hint of fangs sending a thrill down Aziraphale’s spine. 

“Slower?” Crowley asked. 

“Slower,” Aziraphale confirmed, even though it didn’t really make a God damn difference. _Only four senses, only four senses, only four senses,_ he begged himself. 

\--- 

He dreamed. 

In the dream, he stood in a room. It was a little like the one in the Hall, with a big bed draped in silky grey sheets and dark grey floors and walls. There was art in golden frames, though not the Bosch paintings Aziraphale had grown used to and there was a window, though outside was not the distant office buildings swamped in thick green fog, but a city street. It was near dawn and the pale stone buildings on the other side of the road were touched with the first pale notes of morning. 

A car hummed down the street, head-lamps lit. Aziraphale wouldn’t have known what it was except for how many of the Petty Crime archives had to do with car thievery. In fact, the street below was lined with parked cars. One stood out to him, a black one with a little winged silver symbol on the hood. He knew it was Crowley’s and that Crowley loved it, immediately. 

The window was open and there was a breeze, which was how Aziraphale noticed that he was naked and chilly. In the bed, there was the dim shape of a sleeping man. An unlit candle stood on the gilt table next to the bed. Aziraphale went to the table and picked up the box of matches. His fingers knew how to light one better than he did. 

Aziraphale lit the candle. The light flared warm and yellow, not like the Light of a miracle at all – there was so much orange in it. He went to the bed. The candle was in his hand, the wax warming under his fingers. 

The light caught on Crowley’s hair first, burnished in the firelight, a dawn that came all at once, lurching suddenly over the horizon, hot and red. He was naked. His wings were folded underneath him, soot on soot. His nose was too pointed, the line of his chin was knife sharp, his lips were thin but soft with sleep. Aziraphale leaned forward. There was a little black-red snake curling down his temple, flickering tongue just touching the uppermost bone of his jaw. Crowley was exactly as Aziraphale had known he would be and he couldn’t help himself from wanting to touch, to link everything he was certain about, the feel of changing skin under his hands to this image – as he leaned the candle tipped in his hand and a single drop of wax spilled out to splash against the smooth skin of Crowley’s shoulder. Crowley’s skin shimmered like a mirage in the desert and darkened, black scales sliding into existence reflexively beneath the spot where the wax was cooling into a thin film. 

“Angel?” Crowley said, yawning and turning towards him. The fabric around Aziraphale’s wrist that linked them was tightening, cutting off the circulation, till his fingertips began to tingle and it was hard to keep a hold of the candle anymore. Crowley’s eyes blinked open, yellow and slit-pupiled, his brows were drawn together with worry. “What are you doing?” he asked. 

“I’m sorry,” Aziraphale gasped. He dropped the candle and the bed went up in flames like it was made of tinder. 

“Aziraphale!” Crowley shouted. Aziraphale put his hand out to pull Crowley from the bed, but there was something tied round his wrist, trapping his arm – he couldn’t lift it. 

Aziraphale woke. He sat up, gasping. His upper lip was wet with sweat. His left hand was asleep, the pins and needles almost too sharp to bear as he clutched it to his chest. He’d never felt anything like it before, but he supposed that’s what he got for forcing so much of his Self into his physical body. 

Crowley was beside him. He could feel the warm weight of him, but he hadn’t stirred. The darkness was complete. Aziraphale waved his prickling hand in front of his face and couldn’t even tell it was there. 

“I can’t wait any longer,” Aziraphale said to Crowley’s still body. “I want to start from now.” 

Aziraphale snapped and Light flooded the room. 

He looked the same as he had in the dream, but he was young also. Aziraphale didn’t know what gave that away but it was given away, easily. There was no snake at his temple. Aziraphale’s fingers itched to touch the blank spot. 

“Angel?” Crowley said, rolling in the bed. There was a warning in his voice. The sheets were twining around his waist. His eyes blinked open, yellow and slit-pupiled. “What are you doing?” 

His wings expanded from his back, casting slithering shadows on the wall behind him, bigger and bigger, blotting out the Light, but it was nothing against the expanse of Aziraphale’s miracle, the manifestation of his desperation to See. 

He was knew he was running out of time, so he Looked. Crowley’s Self was all darkness. A dark that went on like the ocean to the very edges of a gold frame and still spilled beyond, white-caps of darkness within darkness. But like the ocean, there was something transparent about it, a red that shined up from just beneath the surface like light through skin. It was the darkness of the space between the stars where a limited eye was certain that if it just looked harder it might be able to see all the other stars that were too far, which, in turn, might fill the sky with light. 

“Aziraphale!” Crowley shouted. He was distraught. 

“It’s okay,” Aziraphale said. “I already know you, I already know.” 

“I can’t believe you!” Crowley said. 

“It doesn’t matter to me,” Aziraphale said. “For God’s sake, look at yourself, you’re just as you should be.” 

He could have Looked at Crowley like that, straining to see every unending inch of him, to understand him entirely, turning over the strange intricacies of his dark, rippling Self forever, for the rest of eternity, but as it turned out, there was only about two minutes of eternity left. 

A cool hand grabbed Aziraphale’s shoulder shocking him back into the physical world. Aziraphale’s Light shuddered out of existence but Crowley clearly wasn’t in any right state to keep his trick with the darkness going, so it was only the usual dim grey of no-when that permeated the Hall. Aziraphale spun round, only catching a glimpse of Crowley’s betrayed face, his long hair in a disarray, eyes unguarded and confused. 

Jophiel’s serene figure floated in the dim room. She was only half-there – the rest of her was storm cloud in another plane of existence, present as the promise of thunder. Lighting flickered in her fingertips, her eyes were as silver as the moon catching on a roiling sea. “The Lord has finished working – the world is begun. You must come quickly, Aziraphale.” 

“What?!” Aziraphale said. “I’m not leaving! What about…” He waved his hands around as though that might explain his current predicament “Everything?” 

“Aziraphale, who iss that?” Crowley said, he was unravelling into his snake body, loops of his long tail expanding into the corners of the room. “Did you bring her here? Why would you—did you ever even—?” 

“Yes, yes, of course I do!” 

“Now, Aziraphale!” Jophiel demanded. “Half of hell is on their way to kill you – there’s no reason for the arrangement to continue. You have no protection.” 

Crowley’s head loomed up over both angels, tongue flickering. “Doesss he not?” Crowley hissed. 

Jophiel was suddenly somehow as tall as Crowley, her pure silver-white wings filling every empty inch of space, pushing through the open window, cutting into the stone walls. “Perhaps you would win, demon,” she said. “And then what would you both do?” 

He held himself there for a long moment, strong and still. Then thoughts turning visibly in his eyes, Crowley sagged, his head sinking and drawing back. 

“Crowley!” Aziraphale said. 

“She’ss right,” he said. 

“She’s not God!” Aziraphale said, desperately. “I could ask-” 

“Of course you’d ask God’s permission. Cause you’re really stellar at asking first.” 

“You don’t understand,” Aziraphale said. “I already knew you! I wouldn’t have done it if I hadn’t already—” 

“There’s no place for us,” Crowley spat, harsh as he could. Aziraphale could see him, he could See him, and he knew just how hard Crowley was trying to be as awful as he’d ever been. 

Jophiel’s hand went tight on his shoulder, her fingers were icy and clean as the fjords that had just been born into existence. “I’m sorry,” she said. “There’s no time.” 

She pulled hard and then there was nothing but Light. 

\--- 

INTERLUDE: HEAVEN 

“Who did you say they’ve sent up for the temptation?” 

“The snake, Crawly.” 

“What?!” 

“What’s the problem with that? He’s a bit of an odd one – rather think it’ll only do us good in the end, putting him in charge of things in the Garden.” 

“The Lord sent Aziraphale to guard the gates!” 

“Ah… I can see how this might become a problem.” 

“You don’t think! Jesus Christ!” 

“Who?” 

“Have you still not read the fucking Book?” 

“I’m getting to it, I’m getting to it! I've been busy. I thought you fixed up his memory, anyway.” 

“It was a lot to cover up.” 

“Was it, though? Really?” 

“I suppose that remains to be seen.” 

\--- 

EARTH 

In an abstract way, Aziraphale had known there was a demon in the Garden, but it felt different standing there while a snake slid up the sheer stone wall to his right, quite casually, as though this were all a very ordinary thing to be happening to them both. 

In the distance, Adam and Eve were running for the hills with Aziraphale’s sword in tow and Aziraphale couldn’t even make himself feel guilty. 

Aziraphale let himself sneak a little glance over his shoulder. The snake was black with a red sort of sheen shining darkly through the obsidian layers of its scales. For some reason, he got stuck imagining what it would feel like to slide his hand down the snake’s head, fingers gliding all along the snake’s warm, smooth back. His left wrist felt funny, like there was something wrapped around it. He flexed his fingers. There was an electric kind of feeling in his hand that hurt as much as it felt good. 

“Sssorry,” the snake said, even as it was becoming not a snake anymore. “Have I seen you around before?” 

“Oh,” Aziraphale said. “Maybe? I’ve been here all along.” 

“In the garden?” 

“Well, I’ve not been anywhere else,” Aziraphale said, tasting it for the lie it was as the words came innocuously out of his mouth, though he couldn’t tell why. 

“Uh-huh,” the demon said. He was looking at Aziraphale too long, with a funny expression. “Listen, this might seem strange but could you take a look at something for me?” 

“Umm,” Aziraphale said rather dubiously, trying his very best not to be too intrigued. The demon wasn’t bothered by his lack of evident enthusiasm and was already digging though his robes, looking for whatever he’d tucked away. 

“Here we are,” he said and produced three perfectly white feathers from folds of black fabric. “I was wondering if there might be any way you could tell me who these belong too?” 

Aziraphale knew before he even touched them. “Where did you find them?” he asked. His voice had gone quiet against his will, like he was prepared, at the drop of a hat, to tell a secret. He accepted the feathers in his still tingling left hand from the demon’s right hand. As their wrists crossed over each other there was a sudden flash of light, a hundred colours, there and gone like a dewy spider-web catching the first streaks of dawn. 

“They were in my bed,” Crowley said. "When I woke up." 

“They were,” Aziraphale said. It wasn’t quite a question. “Well, they’re mine,” he said, softly. “They’re my feathers.” 

“Are they?” Crowley said. His yellow eyes were on Aziraphale with all the intensity of the newly born sun. “What are the chances of that?” 

"I think that I owe you an apology," Aziraphale said. "I'm sorry I don't know what it's for."

"That's two apologies," Crowley said. "But I feel I owe you only one acceptance." He offered a little twist of his mouth, the barest suggestion of a devious smile. "I'm sure it was for my own good."

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said. There was a snake imprinted on Crowley's temple. It was sharp and brand new. Aziraphale could imagine touching it - the thought ran already-forged pathways in his mind, but he didn't _know_ what it would be like to put his fingers there, to brush a curl back behind Crowley's ear. 

“No one calls me that.” 

“I do.” Aziraphale reached out – it was his turn to have no hesitation. Crowley wavered for a second and then took Aziraphale’s left hand with his right. A forever that had been pulled so tight it had nearly snapped slackened suddenly with deep relief. It was Crowley’s turn to only be certain once the deed was already done. 

For us, it makes little difference to the story we know – what comes after this: the world’s beginning, it’s ending, it’s going on anyway, history and God’s unknown plans ticking along. But to them, it made all the difference in the world. And for a few moments back then at the start, it was a world they barely had to share. 

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! Find me on tumblr at [enjambament](https://enjambament.tumblr.com/).


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